Boulevard of Broken Dreams

Green Day Won’t Apologize for Burning Donald Trump at the A.M.A.s

Is it 2004 again? It might as well be: Democrats are miffed at an election, and Green Day is reflecting that frustration. Just as George W. Bush’s administration gave us American Idiot,Donald Trump’s election prompted Green Day to break out an old hard-core chestnut, chanting, “No Trump, no K.K.K., no fascist U.S.A.,” during the band’s performance at the American Music Awards last weekend. On Tuesday night, the band chatted with James Corden on The Late Late Show about the inspiration for their brutal words.

Front man Billie Joe Armstrong revealed that the chant, which the band dropped in the middle of its new song “Bang Bang,” was not rehearsed. And while many Americans might have heard a similar refrain at a recent protest, Armstrong credited another rock band, M.D.C., with its creation.

For those interested, a brief history, courtesy of Rolling Stone, explains it this way:

It’s a line that stretches all the way back to the early Eighties,
when the hardcore group M.D.C. clashed with Nazis in Austin, Texas, so
they wrote the song “Born to Die” about it. . . At the time, however,
singer Dave Dictor was chanting, “No war, no KKK, no fascist USA.”
Armstrong and his bandmates played with M.D.C. in the past, so the
lyric has likely stuck with them over the years.

When asked what the band might title an album about the Trump administration, a la American Idiot, Armstrong laughed before joking, “The Day After.”

“I don’t know; we’re just as much in shock as everyone else is at this,” Armstrong said. “But I think the A.M.A.s, with us, it was a good start to challenge [Trump] on all of his ignorant policies and his racism.”

Armstrong, Mike Dirnt, and Tré Cool also chatted about what it’s like to get inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for their high-school rock band.

Where were they all when they received the news? Tré Cool had a particularly “punk rock” answer: “I was at Walmart, trying to find a record with the word ‘fuck’ in it.”